


Berkeley Blues

by missmollyetc



Series: Murphy's Crew [6]
Category: Tour of Duty (1987)
Genre: Other, Post-Vietnam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Murphy's Laws of Combat # 25</b></p><p><i>"A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Berkeley Blues

"Hey, hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today!"

"US Out of Vietnam!"

"Baby killers!"

"Fascist Bastards!"

"Hell No! WE WON'T GO! HELL NO! WE WON'T GO!"

I look out the window of my dorm room, down at the seething mass of students waving their homemade signs and running from group to group, sharing the anti-war fervor. I should be out there, and I will be. In a moment.

I'm against the war as much as the next student on this campus and with more reason. I've been there. I've seen Vietnam. I've lived in it, killed in it. I know those baby killers they're talking about. I was one.

And that's all I would be to these protestors, these students who live in the bright sunshine and walk to class dreaming of social revolution, if I weren't also one of them. Everyone loves a reformed killer. I think it lends justification to their beliefs to hear me speak of Vietnam, to know that I, Roger Horn, Vietnam Veteran, believe the same things they do.

Although, I don't quite think they understand that I believed them when I went to Vietnam. They prefer to think of me as someone like Percell, good ol' Danny who ate and drank the red, white and blue. They like to think I was slowly, but surely, brought to the realization of the injustice of the Vietnam War. It's safer for them that way. It sets them apart from me, from the war. They are different, they are special, the leaders of tomorrow who would never stoop to pick up a weapon unless it was for a worthy cause--if even then.

I don't think any of them have the courage to be a true pacifist. I know I don't. They don't understand. Just like Danny, they only wish to see one side of the conflict. They don't understand that I--as against the war as I am--could still have picked up my gun for a worthy cause--not the one printed on my draft card, but the one carved into my chest with nine round bullet holes.

What these Berkeley babies with their long hair and flower power don't want to understand is that I loved those baby killers. I still do. I would die for Danny, for Marcus and Marvin and Alberto and Scott, for Sarge and LT. I would kill for them. I already have.

To the students here Vietnam is just a country, an ideological battleground with funny sounding names and people who don't speak English who need to be saved from the Big Bad Wolf. To me, it's the firebase, the people I ate with, laughed with, fought with. The body bags I lugged into choppers and the beers I slipped into my pockets. It's the weight of my radio across my shoulders and the feel of an M-16 under my fingers.

I don't believe you come back from Vietnam so much as it lets you go. Even here, in college, I haven't left it yet. When I enrolled, snagging my money from the G.I.'s Bill just like Uncle Sam promised, all I had to wear were my fatigues. None of my clothes from home fit me anymore; I was too thin. For weeks, I sat in class next to the other guys wearing their fatigues, our backs to the wall, eyeing the windows and making sightlines in our heads while the other students in their bell bottoms and t-shirts tried to ignore us.

I stood out. My hair was too short, my face was too old. My mom complained that it always looked as if I were staring at her from far away. I was weak and thin from my stay at the hospital. I tried to buy sex, instead of asking for a date. I was a mess. I was still in Vietnam.

These days I worry about the paper I have due in history, the next protest my friends in the SLC will want me to speak at. I don't have to worry about making sure my gun doesn't jam, or that I fixed the earpiece on my headgear. There's no LT following me around day in and day out.

I worry about the guys. Marvin writes to me occasionally. His letters come in the mail splattered with mud and covered in foreign stamps. It's nice that he keeps up contact. I tell him about my finals and he tells me about Taylor shooting a monkey out of a tree because he thought it was a sniper.

These are my people, my friends. These are the Berkeley students' baby killers, their fascist bastards. The students don't want them in Vietnam.

Neither do I.

I leave my window and go down to the protest.

**Author's Note:**

> The characters of Tour of Duty do not belong to me. No profit is being made from this story.


End file.
